


In Which a Wizard and a Kaiju are Called to War

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Howl Series - Diana Wynne Jones, Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types, JONES Diana Wynne - Works, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Drifting with a Kaiju Brain, Gen, Kaiju, Magic, Snark, Socks, background war stuff, kingsbury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 05:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13540470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: Newt is a wizard with a kaiju in his living room. Pentecost is a general who could use a giant monster in battle. Hermann noses his way into other people's private business.The Howl's Moving Castle/Pacific Rim crossover you didn't know you needed.





	In Which a Wizard and a Kaiju are Called to War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Candidus_Lupus_Full_Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Candidus_Lupus_Full_Moon/gifts).



> Candidus_Lupus_Full_Moon asked for a fic where Newt and Hermann take Howl and Sophie's places, Hermann magics things, and Newt gets into things with Pentecost. With this, I have delivered! This was such a cool prompt to fill, I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> This was written for the 2017 Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction. Thank you so much to everyone who facilitated and participated. 
> 
> Also thanks to everyone who I bounced ideas off of (especially becomingdanni and booksaresacredspew) while figuring out how to mesh book!verse, movie!verse, and Pacific Rim into something comprehensible.

Newt could build the framework for a drifting spell in his sleep. 

He’d done magic while asleep (or nearly) all the time back in school, and in just the past few months he’d put together dozens of drifting spells. That’s what came of being a surrogate Royal Wizard during inter-dimensional wartime, when the best chance your side had was melding two people’s minds together and sending them out to fight. (Newt tried not to think too hard about that second part.) That wasn't even mentioning the effects of the super secret drifting spell that that Newt never talked about with anybody. 

Anyway, the _point_ was that Newt could build the framework for a drifting spell in almost any conditions _except_ when Hermann was involved. 

For instance, right now Newt was halfway through the construction of a drift with a twist which would let _three_ people work as one giant robot. Great, right? Wrong. His enchanted metal shavings had been tidied up, all the wires had just vanished, and there was a spell on his papers that had fused them together into a solid brick that was magically glued to his workbench. Plus, Hermann was muttering in the other room. Newt was pretty sure he was just sorting socks, but couldn’t be sure he wasn’t cursing them as well.

It was impossible to concentrate. 

Newt made an excuse to go through the living room (get more paper) and made sure to keep an eye on what the meddling mathematician was doing. He was indeed sorting socks, ones that had absorbed errant magic a while back. The patterns and colors slipped from sock to sock so they never matched up.

“Well you don’t need to worry so much about _that,_ ” Newt said. There was some paper in the closet, he was pretty sure. “Bit of a spell gone wrong there.”

He wasn’t looking, but he could _feel_ Hermann roll his eyes. “That’s quite rude,” Hermann grumbled to the socks. “I don’t care what Newton thinks, I say you should match yourselves up. Properly.” 

Newt mentally prepared to never wear socks again. 

“It’s bad enough your owner won’t be reasonable,” Hermann continued. “The least you could do is not follow his example. Maybe you’d rub off on him instead of the other way round. Get him to do the responsible thing.”

Honestly, Newt wasn’t even sure what Hermann was doing in his home. He’d just shown up, riddled with curses and angry at everything, and decided he was living in Newt’s laboratory. House. Kind of castle. It was an all-purpose living arrangement, and it did _not_ look like a pile of trash, thank you very much.

Normally Newt would have just thrown him out. He didn’t need the stress of another very powerful, kind of depressed wizard! One (himself) was more than enough. But Hermann hadn’t been bothered by Calcifer, and that was weird. And cool. And weird. And did Newt mention that there was a kaiju in his living room?

There was a kaiju in his living room. 

It was bound in place by a promise and a good deal of magic, and it was _awesome._

As he walked back to his spell, he pointedly ignored Hermann’s muttering and instead looked at Calcifer. He was a class one kaiju, made of blue flames that were barely contained by a leathery hide. The castle/lab/whatever-you-called-it barely contained him, too, even though it was largely Calcifer’s magic that had created the structure. Every time Newt saw him, he felt a burst of admiration, but whether that was his own (he was quite the kaiju connoisseur) or Calcifer looking through Newt’s eyes at himself (he was surprisingly vain for an injured, fifty-foot tall, slavering monster) Newt wasn’t sure. Either way, Calcifer looked back and, in Newt’s mind, said _“I like him.”_

 _“You would,”_ Newt retorted. _“Have you figured out what’s wrong with him yet?”_

 _“It’s complicated,”_ Calcifer hissed. His tail lashed against the wall. “ _The old age is a curse, I know that much, though there’s layers to it. Nothing magical about the limp. As far as I can tell he’s just decided to live here and calculate things.”_ His mind slid sideways around that sentence, as though he was lying.

_“What aren’t you telling me?”_

_“Nothing,”_ Calcifer lied. He bared his teeth in a threatening grin. 

Newt mentally flipped Calcifer off and dropped the papers on the ground. He pushed his glasses up his nose and rolled up his sleeves, and the magical kaiju tattoos on his body snaked their way down to his forearms so they could be seen. If he could find the things Hermann put away he could get back to work on the spells for General Penteco—

“Oh, shit!”

Newt had completely forgotten the noises Pentecost had been making about increasing Newt’s involvement in the war effort. The tattoos had been a giveaway that his specialty was kaiju, and Pentecost had started asking questions, and Newt had shared more than he meant to before he could stop himself. But that expertise? Newt could talk about it all day but he was _absolutely_ not going to bring it into the war, no matter what. He knew that, Calcifer obviously knew that too, but Hermann? 

Hermann was going to mess it up somehow. 

Newt bolted for the other room, words spilling out of his mouth he’d even crossed the threshold. 

“Hermann, I forgot to mention something very important. So listen up, okay, because this could mean all of our skins. Even yours, Calcifer. If someone comes to the Kingsbury door with a message that looks kinda official, you know, with official seals and TOP SECRET stamps and everything? Don’t let him in. _Especially_ if he tells you he’s on an errand from the general. Just, I don’t know, pretend nobody’s home or hit him with your stick or—”

“Will you shut up?” Hermann snapped. He waved his cane in Newt’s general direction. “What’s so bad about this hypothetical gentleman anyway?”

“Well.” Newt took a deep breath. “The short version, Mister Nose, is that he’d put me in a very difficult position that would threaten either my livelihood or my life itself. And _you_ might not care, but I’ll have you know that if Calcifer and I die, you don’t have a place to stay. So there.”

Hermann hauled himself to his feet, using the cane to steady himself on his good leg. Newt couldn’t tell if he was worried or in pain or just in a bad mood as always. “And just how long have you been waiting to tell me, hmm? The gentleman was here this morning. He left a letter there, on the table.”

Newt felt dizzy. “Ohhh no. Oh boy. This is gonna be bad.”

“And whose fault is that?” Hermann snapped, completely devoid of the sympathy Newt felt he deserved. If he couldn’t avoid it entirely, General Pentecost summoning him would be very difficult to slither out of, and he might just have to get up and move away entirely.

Instead of answering, Newt crossed to the table and pulled out the letter, sealed so officially there was no chance Hermann had mistaken a door-to-door salesman with the General’s messenger. _To the Wizard Newton Pendragon_ the letter began (and regardless of the context that last name always sounded really cool). 

“Oh no you don’t,” Newt said aloud. “If I let you read this, you’re never going to give me a minute of peace.”

Hermann, who had come up behind him and was trying to look over his shoulder, turned away sulking. “You probably don’t deserve it,” he grumbled. “What does the general want with you, anyway?”

“He wants me to stand around and look pretty,” Newton said vaguely, as he scanned the rest of the letter. _Kaiju expertise… training and harnessing… a kaiju living in your home… remarkably effective… necessary measures._ It was bad. “Why _did_ you have to open that door anyway?”

“I don’t see why you’re so incensed with me over something that’s almost certainly your own fault,” Hermann retorted. 

That put them at a standstill. Newt refused—for his own safety mind you—to tell Hermann exactly what Pentecost wanted from him, and Hermann refused to let it go or show any sympathy at all. Eventually they returned to their projects with a great deal more malice. Newt’s drifting framework not only failed to distract him, but fell apart completely. To his great unease, Hermann actually finished sorting the socks, having apparently glared them all into submission. He also questioned Calcifer about the contents of the letter, to which Calcifer responded with an elusive, “sorry, conflict of interest.” 

“Thank you for not selling me out,” Newt said aloud, leaning in the doorway to show Hermann that he knew about the snooping, thank you very much.

Hermann glared, and Newt returned to his ineffective project, only to have Calcifer slip through their link and into his brain. When they talked like this, Newt only got flickers of Calcifer’s presence. Flame and drool and claws and purple eyes that watched his soul keenly. Weirdly, he didn’t get the size as much as when he was standing in the living room, his head barely cresting the top of Calcifer’s feet.

 _“I don’t think it would be so bad,”_ Calcifer said in his mind. _“I’d be happy to fight in the war. I’d love to destroy the giant robots you and Strangia are putting out, crush the kaiju that dare rise up to interfere—”_

 _“No.”_ Newt was very firm on this point. It was unlikely that Pentecost knew what he was asking— being (as Hermann would put it) a kaiju “groupie” was different from being reckless enough to drift with an injured kaiju and then get _stuck_ — but Calcifer couldn’t help but be aware of the risks. If he died, Newt died too, and vice versa. “ _We are_ not _going to war. Do you remember why I drifted with you in the first place? I thought you were_ dead _after you ran into that jager, or as good as.”_

Calcifer hissed. “ _Just because you couldn’t tell if I was alive or not—”_  

 _“You wouldn’t be here if not for me, and as annoying as you are, I’m not going to let you run off into war and ignore my noble sacrifice. Also I would die. Or at the very_ _least end up with war flashbacks from a battle I wasn’t even in._ ”

_“I am a fifty meter tall monster. I could destroy everything you hold dear.”_

_“No you can’t! And you may be fifty meters tall, but in my heart you’re only one meter tall.”_

Calcifer didn't seem to know what to say to that, which probably meant Newt had won. It wasn’t every day you could win a fight against a kaiju, so he felt pretty good about that. The next thing to do was reread the General’s letter and look for loopholes to exploit. Newt was a very difficult position; he had to make sure Pentecost knew that under no circumstances would he and Calcifer be engaged in the fighting, but in such a delicate way that he’d still hire Newt for other spells, and without revealing the whole accidentally-drifted-with-a-kaiju thing which would probably get him in some kind of trouble. He could definitely manage, he just had to—

The letter was not in his pocket.

“Oh shit,” he said. “Shit shit shit. _Hermann!_ ”

He burst into the other room just in time to see Hermann hiding something letter-shaped behind his back. “What?” Hermann demanded, turning his nose up in completely inappropriate disdain. “If you have something to say, say it. Don’t just shout at me for the sake of shouting.”

“You were snooping again! I mean, I don’t know why I expected anything else from you, but I made it _very clear_ that this— this was private correspondence!” Newt’s voice pitched upwards and he waved his hands in frustration. His glasses were about ready to fall off his face and he shoved them back up his nose. 

Hermann scowled. “So you don’t think it’s any of my business that you’re working for _the Army,_ during wartime, on something that could possibly jeopardize us all—”

“It wouldn’t affect anyone else if you hadn’t gone and dug into my—”

“Well it’s a good thing I did!” They were talking over each other now, loud and fast and furious. “If you’re going to war behind all of our backs—”

“No, Hermann, you don’t understand. I _have_ been helping the General, I’ve— I’ve been making him transport spells and protections for his men, I haven’t been on the front lines, and I’m not going to, and _that’s_ why I’ve been ignoring this letter.”

“Also he’s a coward,” Calcifer said from his place curled in the corner.

“Well _that_ much is obvious,” Hermann snapped. “So what is this that you’re slithering out of? He wants you for your expertise in kaiju, is it? That’s something you’ve got plenty of.” 

“No,” Newt said. “I’m mad at you.” He snatched the letter out of Hermann’s hands, shoved his glasses up his nose, and stormed out of the room.

Calcifer laughed.

Newt fumed around his workshop for a while. This was _so_ not fair! Hermann couldn’t have been more trouble if he was _trying_ to be malicious, which Newt was pretty sure he wasn’t. Somehow that just made it worse. He was this untapped man-shape of rage and chaos, and if he— or someone else— could harness that power, he could probably destroy the entire world. 

Come to think of it, why _hadn’t_ Newt tried that yet?

He futzed around for another minute, just for his image, and then burst back out into the living room. Hermann was stamping his cane on the ground and muttering, either to himself or Calcifer. 

“Okay, look,” Newt said, quickly, before Hermann went on the offense. “I’m still mad, but I’m going to tell you, just this once. Even though you’re a terrible snoop and a bully and—”

“Well get to it, then,” Hermann snapped. 

“Okay, okay.” Newt took a deep breath. “On one condition.” 

Hermann rolled his eyes so hard it hurt to look at. 

“You go yell at the General and tell him that I won’t do it.”

 

 

In the end, Newt managed to keep his mouth shut for just long enough to drive a bargain, and Hermann’s curiosity sealed the deal. Newt didn’t explain everything—not the drifting thing, certainly—but he made it clear that the General wanted Calcifer to go to war, and Newt with him, and whatever Calcifer wanted that was not going to happen. 

“Useless, the both of you,” Hermann muttered,, but he didn’t say no, and in fact only scowled when Newt insisted he get dressed up as nicely as possible and yelled instructions from the other room. 

"You just need to make sure he knows we're unfit for fighting," Newt said, tugging on a sock, “but not for research and development. And under no circumstances is he to investigate why. Say we're cowards of you must, but say it with some oomph to it."

"I'm not a coward," Calcifer insisted.

"Well if that's the fake reason, what's the real one?" Hermann demanded.

Newt cleverly avoided answering by saying, "no, no that is the real reason," and herding Hermann out the Kingsbury door.

Kingsbury was red and gold and bustling and opulent, but even the rich and important were tense and wary with the stress of war. Newt had studied there for a few years, worked a few more, and he could tell when the luster of the place was crumbling. Hermann, on the other hand, seemed in awe of the spires and ornamentation, though that didn't stop him from grumbling about it.

“Ridiculously gaudy,” he muttered at the archways, his voice laced with magic. The ornate carvings seemed to wither into themselves in shame.

The streets shook with the steps of jagers patrolling or practicing just outside the city, their mechanical heads bobbing over the skyline. From this distance, Newt couldn't tell which drift spells were his.

These days, General Pentecost split his time between the Royal Palace and the War Room, and it was the latter that Newt shuffled Hermann towards. This building was less elaborate, with walls that were thick and low and kind of ugly. Newt really preferred the look of the palace better, but this was definitely the place to be to withstand any sort of attack. They made their way through corridors, Newt brandishing the accursed letter to anyone who tried to stop him, and in this way they arrived in the General’s Office. 

The General had his back towards the door when he entered, but even so he was one of the most impressive figures Newt had ever seen, tall, dark, and impeccably competent. The fitted military jacket he wore today was more practical, displaying only his rank with little ornamentation, but Newt had seen his collection of honors. Honestly, if it had been someone else running the war Newt probably would have just run as far away as possible. Like he still wanted to, actually.

“Newton Pendragon,” Pentecost said, “it’s good to see you.”

He turned around, and there was no buffer between him and Newt; not the desk in the corner or the war map spread on a table on the other side of the room. Newt swallowed.

“Right,” Newton said. “I know you’re going to ask about the kaiju thing, but actually, I’ve come because my, ah, colleague has something to say.” He stepped backwards and nudged Hermann forward, ignoring Hermann’s hushed protest. 

“General Pentecost,” Hermann said slowly, stepping forward because Newt gave him little choice. 

“What?” Pentecost said, looking Hermann over critically. Newt’s plan had been to back out of the room, but he found that his feet wouldn’t listen to him. “Who are you?”

“He’s with me,” Newt said quickly. The General turned his gaze on Newt, who somehow managed to hold his ground. 

“As a… colleague, or rather, as a mentor, of this young man,” Hermann said infuriatingly, “I am morally obligated to inform you that he’s completely unfit for duty.” 

“Not _completely,”_ Newt whispered helpfully.

"Very near completely."

Pentecost stepped closer and looked Hermann over, and Hermann puffed himself up in order to withstand that gaze. Newt _knew_ bringing him was a good idea.

"As a matter of fact, he's been rather useful to me these past few months," Pentecost said. "So why is it you're telling me he's unfit?”

“Because— because he's a coward. If you ask him to do anything that puts his life on the line, or his kaiju's, he'll abandon the effort completely."

Pentecost raised an eyebrow. "Really? It seems to me he wouldn't be here telling me this, even by proxy, if he was actually going to run away."

Newt winced.

"Well, that's thanks to me," Hermann said. His knuckles were white around the handle of his cane. ”He would have swept your summons under the rug if I hadn't forced him to do something about it."

"You see, I doubt that," Pentecost said. "I think his conscience would have gotten the better of him. And I also think we need that kaiju of his. There's a war on, Mr.—"

"Gottlieb."

"Mr. Gottlieb. And I don't think you know the first thing about war. I'm not doing this because I want to make anybody miserable, or because I want anybody to die. The exact opposite, in fact. And Mr. Pendragon seems to have something that could help us turn the tide. Harness the unstoppable force of a _kaiju_ for our own efforts.”

Hermann glared. For some reason, he seemed to be taking this as personally as Newt wanted him to. “And just what are you going to do with a kaiju? _”_ he demanded.

Pentecost glared. “I believe I am conducting this business with Mr. Pendragon. I’m not even sure why you’re in my office.” He smoothed out his impeccable shirtsleeves and turned away, as though denying Hermann his physical presence.

“No,” Newt said, and his voice squeaked more than he would have liked. “Actually, show him. Show both of us. I don’t know your plan either, and if I’m going to enter into any sort of a contract, I should definitely know what I’m getting myself into.” For a desperate bid for time he thought he sounded rather reasonable.

Pentecost shot him a withering gaze and Newt very nearly backed up to the door, but he somehow stayed put. His feet felt warm with the effort. 

“Fine. In the most general terms possible.” Pentecost crossed the room and gestured at a war map, covered in pins and flags and miniature jager figurines. There were no kaiju ones (which would have been _awesome_ ). “These are us. These are Strangia. This is where—”

“I’m sorry,” Hermann cut in. “Is this supposed to be to scale?”

“Yes.”

“Because this isn’t where the river cuts at all. So if these people are camped on the bank of the river, they really should be more like… _here._ ” He leaned over the map and began moving pieces around according to the calculations in his head. After a moment he pulled a pencil out of his pocket and began jotting down numbers. Newt really hoped he wasn’t accidentally magicking entire squadrons from this distance. 

“Mr. Gottlieb,” Pentecost said. 

“You are _centimeters_ off here. Centimeters! You ought to have your mapmaker fired.” To his credit, Pentecost frowned in a way that suggested he would have somebody who was not Hermann look at it soon.

“General Pentecost,” Newt said. He took a step forward despite himself, and the words came to his lips unbidden. “We’re obviously not trying to make you, like, lose the war. I’m— I’ve been doing all those spells, and if you want anyone to calculate anything, well, Hermann’s your guy but when it comes to Calcifer— the kaiju—”

Pentecost raised an eyebrow. Newt stepped forward again. 

“When it comes to the kaiju I’m going to have to say no,” Newt said, quite unable to stop talking. “It’s— think of it like experimental technology. Possibly useful, possibly going to blow up the world, really not a good idea to add to an already completely awful battle. Really bad. Horrible. You don’t know what you’re asking, and I don’t care about your strategy, I can’t let you have it.”

The General pursed his lips. “I wouldn’t expect you to agree to anything without negotiation. I said so in my letter. But if you have a kaiju, harnessed, I need to know about it.”

“Well, now you do,” Newt said. “And I’m sorry, but that’s all you’re getting.” He crossed the room and yanked Hermann back from the map. “I am at a major breakthrough when it comes to understanding kaiju, and if you kill mine, or me, that’s all gone. You’ve got a real Royal Wizard somewhere, go find him. Go worry about the war. But if you won’t let this go, then you’re not getting any more drift spells, or any of Hermann’s numbers.”

Pentecost did not look impressed. Newt rather suspected he wasn’t going to let it go.

“Good _day,_ ” Hermann said emphatically as they left.

They both said very little as they hurried them down hallways and back outside, but once they were on the street Newt slowed and finally stopped. His heart raced, his breath came in gasps, and even Calcifer, back in the castle, seemed concerned. 

“That was bolder of you than I was expecting,” Hermann said, panting. “Ugh. At any level war is a nasty business, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what came over me, like, I wasn’t intending to chew him out like that. It was like I couldn’t leave! And then I was getting all in his space and—“ he paused as a horrible thought struck him. He pulled up his pants legs to inspect his socks. 

They matched.

“Hermann, are these the ones you were sorting today?”

“Yes, I think so.” 

“Ughh.” Newt thumped his head against the wall. “You cursed me to do that. My socks wouldn’t let me leave until I spoke my mind to that guy. I _called_ it. Oh my God that was terrifying.” He laughed weakly and considered himself grateful that Pentecost and Hermann hadn’t completely obliterated each other in there. 

Hermann gave him a look, as though Newt was out of his mind. “I’m sure I did not—“

“Oh believe me, you did.”

At this, Hermann grimaced, lost in thought, until Newt composed himself. Then he demanded “Well, what are we going to do now?”

“I… go home? I guess?” Newt bit his lip. Hermann nodded and followed his gesture towards the door to the castle/lab/thing. Home. They moved more slowly now; Pentecost seemed to be letting them go. 

“And hey,” Newt said, after a moment. “Thanks, you know?” 

Hermann sniffed. “Well, it wouldn’t do me any good to be turned out because you got sent off to battle, would it?” His mouth twitched up in half a smile. 

Newt responded with a wide grin. “Nope. Now let’s make sure that never even comes _close_ to happening again.”

He had an uncomfortable feeling that might be more difficult than he made it sound.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought :D
> 
> You can also find me on tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores.


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